Yes, Our Assessment of Nuclear Safety is Not Completely Logical, But….
A great deal of our objection to nuclear energy is based not on logical thinking, but on a kind of irrational hysteria that derives from our contemplating the explosion of hydrogen bombs, or how much more devastating accidents like Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island could have been. Here’s an article, one of dozens I’ve seen over the years, that makes this point.
I’m not sure what to make of this, however. That these accidents in nuclear power plant operation began and ended where they did are interesting data points, but they’re certainly not predictive of the future. And it’s hard to know what to make of the waste disposal issue, the outrageous costs, the huge tax-payer subsidies, nuclear plants as terrorist targets, and the threat that enriched nuclear fuel can be used in weapons of mass destruction.
I know Frank Eggers will be along here any moment with a comment that thorium reactors are the answer here. I don’t really object to that; in fact, my fondest hope is that he’s correct. My understanding, however, is that we’re a long way away, in terms of both years (decades) and dollars (tens of billions), from a viable implementation of that technology.
Craig, I believe you may come around to a reasonable robust energy policy that includes nuclear. I believe this because you have recognized the hysteria associated with the rabid anti nuclear establishment. That is taking the first small step into a greener world IMO.
The main unrefutable arguement against nuclear has centered on the magnitude of the catastrophic unforseen events that could happen even though their likelyhood of occurence or reoccurence is quite small.
We do learn from our mistakes.
Some recent press has been given to the small scale reactors, both PWR and LFR designs.
The PWR design is not as fail-safe as the self regulating LFR but it would not take a long time to bring current technology on line in a smaller package.
This would help in the deployment of solar and wind projects if they included a small nuke at the center of their service area. This would smooth out the peaks and valleys associated with intermittent sources. The sharp peaks could be met with flywheel storage or peaking natural gas turbines. Of course the ideal would be efficient battery storage but that technology is perhaps just as distant as our Thorium reactor. An all of the above approach is IMO the safest approach to a future that includes reliable electricity at the bus bar 24x7x365.
It would be somewhat of a stretch to assert for certain that the LFTR is the answer, but to me it looks very promising. The IFR is another possibility, but it does have drawbacks. Till and Chang, who wrote the book “Plentiful Energy,” strongly favor the IFR. I would favor R & D on any nuclear technology that looks promising since halting R & D prematurely could mean that we would fail to implement a technology that would go a long way towards solving our energy problems.
Presumably, if we are diligent about R & D and implementing various types of power systems on a pilot basis, we will discover what works best. At that point, it would make sense to scrap inferior systems. The “all of the above” approach, which some espouse, would likely result in implementing some systems which cost four or more times as much as the least expensive system; that would make no sense. Of course, it is possible that what works best would depend on location and other factors.
In a recent bill insert, Power New Mexico pointed out that they are required to generate 20% of their power from renewable sources by 2020. It appears that the seriousness of CO2 emissions is not widely understood. We will, by some date, need to get most of our power from sources that are almost completely carbon free. A moderate amount of carbon free power would be greatly insufficient.
I did not intend for my previous post to be anonymous.
The linked-to article was good. However, I would like to cover a point that it did not include.
The Fukushima disaster is largely the result of Japanese culture, as others have also pointed out. I worked for 10 years for a Japanese company in San Diego, so I am very familiar with a critical aspect of it.
In Japanese culture, it is an exceedingly serious faux paux to point out someone’s mistake. That is especially true when someone points out a mistake that someone of a higher rank has made. In the Fukushima case, during the planning phase, it was known that it was a serious mistake to locate the Diesel generators and other ancillary equipment where it was located because it would not be adequately protected from a tsunami. However, Japanese culture prevented that error from being pointed out. Although that could also happen here in the U.S., it is far less likely because we are less reticent about pointing out errors. In fact, because that problem is well understood, we often implement procedures to circumvent it.
The Japanese also understand that and in the future they will probably implement procedures to prevent that aspect of their culture from putting the public at risk.
Craig,
Here’s the thing:
In terms of potentially dangerous/life threatening calamities that result from failure of a power generation source, hydropower wins… hands down.
The mega-quake that rocked Fukushima (followed by one of the 5 largest tsunamis in recorded history), would have caused the Grand Coulee dam to breach and the resulting floodwaters would have killed thousands and destroyed tens of billions in property. The Fukushima reactor withstood the quake with little damage, and would have been able to come back online without issue in a couple of days had the backup coolant generators been located ~3 meters higher altitude (and hence avoiding the record-shattering tsunami).
That was 40-year old technology, and it very nearly withstood one of the worst poundings that the EARTH has ever delivered. Not one single dam in the world could have taken that hit.
Do we then eliminate hydropower? Shift all those electron impulses that were generated by carbon-neutral water-flow back to coal-sourced power just because if a natural disaster strikes a dam might fail?
The argument is beyond irrational, it’s ecologically unconscionable.
The same argument can be made with respect to terrorist strikes – because the dams are more vulnerable than the nuclear power plants in most cases.
A person is subjected to more radiation exposure living 10 miles away from a coal plant than they are from living 1 mile away from a nuclear plant. Even if the waste is not moved, it’s better for everyone if we replaced every coal plant with a nuclear power plant.
Obviously, using wind, geothermal, and solar (where economically viable) would be better than using nuclear… but these cannot scale to the 18% of the grid energy that nuclear provides very quickly… and in some regions – such as the American SouthEast – these have no potential to ever be a significant portion of our energy mix.
Nuclear beats coal on every possible method of evaluation. The risks are extremely small.
I would state that it is rational to question any plans to put up a nuclear power plant near an active fault line… but otherwise, every nuclear reactor that goes up might be one coal plant that is brought down. That’s moving forward.